GDPR and Privacy concerns for a Stripe Customer Scoring tool

Hello, Indie Hackers!

I was ready to write a post to tell you how what I built is amazing and shamelessly plug the product. But reality came knocking as I talked about it for the first time on Twitter after releasing it. Some people started pointing out potential issues with GDPR or privacy laws compliance.

Instead, since I know you guys are some of the best critics on the internet, I'm looking for constructive feedback. It can be hard truth feedback, but some guidance towards potential solutions would be appreciated.

For context, CCHKR is a customer checker that empowers Stripe-based businesses with customer scoring (similar to credit score). It built it for myself as I was curious to know which customers in my Stripe account had what I would label as "toxic behaviors". The goal is to prevent issues like unfair refunds, chargeback disputes, and failed prepaid card payments.

In case you're wondering, the only data that you have access is the one that is in your Stripe account, and the only data used across Stripe accounts is their behavior to calculate a more accurate customer score. For example, if 2 Stripe accounts have the same customer (aka email) there will be a match and the behavior data will be used to calculate the customer score, but the important part is that you will only see the data that you see in your Stripe dashboard.

Hopefully it's clear enough for you to be able to give feedback:

• Is that something that you feel would be valuable for your business? (if you're using Stripe)
• Even though I am biased an know there's a problem to solve, is this something you'd implement in your business?
• How would you go about the GDPR and privacy laws to be compliant as it's using Stripe data?
• Would updating the terms of usage that people have to "re-agree" could be an answer to getting their consent to share their Stripe data with CCHKR? Or would you suggest something better and easier?

The idea behind CCHKR is to help Stripe businesses. If you didn't know yet, a lot of businesses using Stripe get unfair refund requests (for example, would abuse the platform then ask for a refund), or received chargeback disputes when a simple email asking for a refund could have worked.

That's on top of all the card testing (fraudulent activities), and the usage of prepaid cards (virtual temporary cards) which gives false hope of a new customer. There's nothing wrong per se with prepaid cards, but it's sad to see that people would sign up with the intention of not committing to truly being a customer. (Personally think that signing up and cancelling your subscription is better than using prepaid cards, since failed payments doesn't give a clear sign that you want to cancel your subscription.)

Anyway, the point is not to debate chargeback disputes or prepaid cards.

The goal of CCHKR is to give you insightful data that helps you identify toxic customers, so you can decide what to do. It's not about automatically excluding people, but instead give business owners the choice to decide if they want to do business with you or not based on the data they have on you. It's really like a credit score and how financial institution works.

I can understand that it sounds diminutive, but I think that if businesses can focus on growth and have have happier or more positive relationship with their customers, it would make everything slightly better.

Bottom line, I'd love to get your feedback and thoughts on CCHKR.
Thank you so much 🙏